I've started knitting a baker boy style cap from a pattern in a magazine. It's my first venture into cables. However I'm finding the instructions tricky to understand and wonder if someone might suggest what I should be doing.

So far so good. I followed that and it all seems ok. The instructions then say "Cont without further shaping in patt as set until work measures 14cm from beg, ending with a WS row."

This is where I'm stuck - I don't know what to do.

At first I thought I just had to go back to the beginning of the sequence, and just omit the increases, but how can I go back to what row 1 says, because that was for a row of 72 sts, not 104sts as I've ended up with?

On row 1 it doesn't matter how many stitches there were the first time you did it, the key is here - " (p4, k5) 7 times" You repeat those stitches not just 7 times, but as many as it takes so you end up with a p4, k2 at the end. But yeah, what Amanda said, follow your knitting, not the pattern. The first time through established the pattern, just repeat it.

I think that you're right. I decided it was more a sequence, than the exact pattern I need to repeat, so I did knit the knits and purl the purls, cabling on the 4th row. It seems to have come out correctly and I've reached the point where I now need to shape the crown.

The pattern was out of The Art of Knitting magazine which I'm getting from my newsagent every Thursday.

Suzeeq - "follow the knitting, not the pattern" - I will remember that wise advice!